Two Stories about Jean Roland

A Passage from Luminous Airplanes, or Things As They Were:
A Hyperromance

Despite his reluctance to tell unverifiable tales, my grandfather did
tell me two stories about Jean Roland, one which took place before he
came to the New World, and one which took place after.

The first story went like this: once upon a time there was a young Frenchman
named Jean Roland who stole a goat. Goat-theft was a terrible crime in
those days, and Jean was put in prison. He would have spent the rest of
his short life there, if it had not been for two brothers, Jacques-Etienne
and Joseph Montgolfier, paper-manufacturers in the city of Lyon, who had
just invented the balloon. Never
mind how they did it. The point of this story is that they brought their
invention to the King, Louis XVI, who would himself be imprisoned just
a few years later. It happened that a young nobleman at Louis’s
court, Pilâtre de Rozier, saw the balloon, and said that he wanted
to fly in it. The King was hesitant to grant his request. No one knew
what would happen to a person who flew; no one had ever flown before.
What if there were demons in the upper air, waiting to seize anyone who
rose up? What if there were angels? But Pilâtre insisted, and finally
the King agreed to a compromise. They would send up a test flight, with
some animals and a prisoner, and if nothing bad happened, Pilâtre
would be allowed to go up next.

You don’t have to ask who the prisoner was: Jean. He volunteered.
According to my grandfather, no one else would; this was one of the many
parts of the story that defied belief. Anyway. One morning in the gardens
at Versailles, the balloon was inflated, and Jean, still in chains, was
loaded into the basket, along with a sheep, a rooster, and a rabbit. They
let the balloon go up. It came down some time later in another part of
the forest, where peasants menaced Jean with pitchforks—they mistook
him for a demon, and would probably have killed him if the King’s
men hadn’t showed up. As it was, Jean was unharmed; the animals
were fine, too, although the rooster had become agitated and pecked the
rabbit.

Pilâtre de Rozier ascended in the same balloon a few days later
before a crowd of tens of thousands, and he entered the history books
as the first human being to get off the ground—the first European,
anyway. The Turks
have their own claimant for that title, and so, as always, do the
Chinese. But really Jean had been the first. As a reward for his bravery
he was released from prison, but the King would not allow him to remain
in France, for fear that he’d tell people about the balloon. So
Jean was banished to America. Let him talk all he wanted there, said the
King: no story that came from America could be believed.

The second story is sad, and quite factual. It concerns Jean after he
had come to America, and the valley was settled, the town of Thebes constructed,
and Jean had a son, Oliver, who had grown to manhood. Jean had wanted
the town of Thebes to be self-sufficient, an entity more or less closed
off from the rest of the world. Oliver, who was more American than his
father, saw an opportunity to make money by sawing up the trunks of the
hemlock trees that used to grow around here in great numbers. Oliver and
his father argued about the prospective sawmill for a long time, then
Jean agreed to put the question to a vote. He presented his arguments
against the mill: it would bring money into town; money would bring strangers;
strangers would bring discontent, etc. Oliver pointed out that the mill
would make everyone rich. Not one person voted with Jean, not even his
wife, who wanted to buy herself a mirror, and some carpets, because her
circulation was poor and she complained of the cold from September to
May. The mill was constructed, and it did make money, for a while, until
the hemlock forests were exhausted.

But after it was built, Jean withdrew from Thebes society. He didn’t
fight with anyone; he just spent more and more time walking by himself
in the mountains. One day in the autumn of 1840, Jean went for a walk
and did not return. His body was found on the flank of what is now called
Espy Peak, looking very peaceful. It was, my grandfather said, as though
he had imagined Thebes as a sort of balloon, which could only fly if it
was sealed up, a sphere unto itself. And, my grandfather concluded this
story, shaking his head darkly in the direction of the Regenzeits’
house, it seems possible to me that Jean was right.